Onaprep and FEDA sign agreement and create the program “Sembrando en Libertad”

Santo Domingo.- The National Office of Support for Penitentiary Reform (Onaprep) and the Special Fund for Agricultural Development (FEDA), signed an inter-institutional agreement for the execution of the program “Sembrando en Libertad” (Sowing in Freedom), an initiative that seeks to transform the reality and life of some of the 26,000 people deprived of liberty facing the national penitentiary system. The alliance was signed by the director of Onaprep, Roberto Santana, and the executive director of FEDA, Hecmilio Galván, at the Correction and Rehabilitation Center of Las Parras, in Guerra. This program will provide inmates with essential tools and knowledge in agricultural production, promoting the cultivation of vegetables, coconuts, cocoa, rabbit meat, chickens, and tilapia, for self-consumption within the facilities.

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Roberto Santana stated that the aim is to make various areas within penitentiary facilities productive, serving as a model of food self-sufficiency in correctional centers. He added that those deprived of their liberty will receive training in agricultural practices, developing technical skills that will be useful when they reintegrate into society. Hecmilio Galvan assured that, with the program, the aim is, in addition to training, to achieve the installation of model farms and plots as occupational therapy, and above all, to donate a small seed capital that allows those deprived of liberty, once released, to have a productive source of income to guarantee a correct social insertion. The program’s goal is to establish, in a first stage, 19 productive units of vegetables and vegetables in penitentiary centers; reduce spending on the purchase of processed foods in the benefited penitentiary centers, enable; use at least 70% of the available spaces in the selected penitentiary centers and train a minimum of 5,000 inmates in agricultural techniques.